Searching for a job or internship can be a stressful experience for college students, but the Kent State Career Services Center and one of its affiliates hope to make life easier for those looking to get their careers off the ground.

Experience eRecruiting Network, a Web site designed to help students and alumni connect with employers, recently revamped its pages in an effort to help ease the burden of job hunting.

“The changes are going to make the processes easier,” said Robin Piatt, assistant director of on-campus recruiting and employer relations at the Career Services Center.

In order to keep their accounts active, students must upload a resume to their Experience profiles. Experience took this one step further by adding Portfolio Beta.

The key to Portfolio is privacy. Unlike the existing job board, where employers can search for students, students have complete control in Portfolio, which allows them to choose whom they would like to view their credentials and work.

While the existing job board only allows employers an affiliation with the Career Services Center to view a student’s information, students can e-mail the link to their Portfolios to anyone, Piatt said. Students can even set a time limit on how long their portfolios can be viewed and track how often it has been viewed.

Portfolio also gives students a chance to delve deeper into their prior job experiences or activities, Piatt said. Students can even add multiple resumes. For instance, a student who is also pursuing a minor can create a resume package geared toward that field of study and send it to employers in that field only.

“The Portfolio feature was put in place to show off the talents and skills of students, especially aspects that don’t fit in a regular resume,” said Janet Sun, vice president of marketing for Experience.

The other goal in tweaking Experience was to make the site easier to navigate, Sun said. Four new icons in the navigation bar allow students to access different areas of the site quickly.

Job Alert opens a screen asking for information about the students’ career interests, such as what type of job they are looking for or where they would like to work. Once the information is submitted, Experience’s database filters and finds jobs based on the criteria and notifies students of any openings, Piatt said. Students can edit any of their information at any time.

Students seeking career advice can consult Guidance, which searches for articles dealing with everything from job outlooks to how to dress for a job interview, Piatt said. Announcements highlight current career issues as well as serving as an area for Experience to notify users of any upcoming contests it frequently holds as incentive for students to actively seek jobs using its resources.

Because the changes are less than a month old, Piatt said that the Career Services Center has not received much feedback on them. However, one student who is actively seeking a job has been pleased with her experience using Experience.

“It seems like it’s going pretty well,” said Diane Balog, a senior middle childhood education major. “It seems pretty easy to use and easy to see what positions are available.”

Contact career services reporter Mike Ashcraft at [email protected].